tabernacle at the
end of the north aisle. But a whole morning, or for that matter a
whole day, is not too much to spend in this beautiful and deserted
sanctuary which bridges for us so many centuries and in which we are
made one with those who helped to establish the foundations of Europe.

XIV

RAVENNA IN THE MIDDLE AGE

The last great original work to be undertaken in Ravenna as the
capital of the empire in the West was the building and decoration of
the churches of S. Vitale and S. Apollinare in Classe. All the
Byzantine work that was done later in Ravenna is merely imitative, an
expression of failing power under the crushing disaster of the Lombard
invasion. When at last Aistulf in 751 made himself master of the
impregnable city, it ceased, and suddenly, to be a capital, and though
in 754 Pepin "restored" it to the papacy and established the pope
throughout the Exarchate and the Pentapolis, he by that act founded
the Papal States, whose capital of necessity was Rome. Thus Ravenna
found herself when Charlemagne had been crowned emperor in 800 little
more than a decaying provincial city, without authority or hope of
resurrection, and it is as a city of the provinces full only of
gigantic memories that she appears in the Middle Age and the
Renaissance and remains to our own day.

The appearance of Charlemagne, the resurrection of the empire in the
West, confirm and consolidate the misfortune of 751 in which indeed
she lost everything. But when we see the great Frank strip the
imperial palace of its marbles and mosaics it is as though the fate of
Ravenna had been expressed in some great ceremony and not by unworthy
hands. An emperor had set her up so high, an emperor had kept her
there so long; it was an emperor who, as in a last great rite, stript
her of her apparel and left her naked with her memories.

[Illustration: The Campanile of S. Apollinare]

Those memories, not only splendid and glorious, but gaunt and terrible
too, smoulder in her ruined heart as the fire may do in the ashes when
all that was living and glorious has been consumed. Almost nothing as
she became when Charlemagne left her, a mere body still wrapt in
gorgeous raiment stiff with gold, but without a soul, she still dreamt
of dominion, of empire, and of power. Governed by her archbishops, she
rebelled against Rome, struggled for a secular and sometimes a
religious autonomy, and came at last, as surely might have been
prophesied, to